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Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time | 
 enlarge | Authors: Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $7.09
You Save: $7.91 (53%)
New (97) Used (67) Collectible (5) from $6.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  1228 reviews
Sales Rank: 13
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0143038257
Dewey Decimal Number: 371.82209549
EAN: 9780143038252
ASIN: 0143038257
Publication Date: January 30, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Talibans backyard Anyone who despairs of the individuals power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistans treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schoolsespecially for girlsthat offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortensons quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1223 more reviews...
Amazing August 26, 2008
One of the best books I have ever read. Inspiring, amazing and perhaps the most motivational story I have heard.
 Good food for thought August 25, 2008
This book is good food for thought for people interested in development efforts in Central Asia. The descriptive writing style was interesting for the most part. Mortenson's story is inspirational, but does leave me with some questions about his methods of operation, which I am glad for the chance to ponder.
I think this would make a great TV report or documentary.
Great read! August 25, 2008
The story of this book is amazing and inspiring. In a time where Muslims are misunderstood this story teaches the reader about the Muslim religion and culture. The truth is that there we all have so much more in common that different. This was not a "light" read due to the thought provoking material and heavy politics. I hate to admit, but there was a lot politics I did not know, so this was very educational for me. The idea of achieving peace by education is brilliant. For those who love books as much as I do this concept seems obvious. We are so blessed to have education so accessible to us here in the the US. I would highly recommend this book to those looking for a great inspiring, educational read, not to mention a great cause to support.
amazing book to promote world peace in a great unique way! August 24, 2008
I started reading Three Cups of Tea because it was a best seller and the title sounded interesting. I just picked it up at my local bookstore. I didn't start reading it right away but then took it on a trip while I was a missionary. and that is a great book to read while on a mission! Greg talks about educating girls in Pakistan. Education is one way to end world hunger and get world peace. With educating, especially girls, you are putting kids to 'work' in a good way. They are learning, becoming smarter, and not on the streets searching for food or building bombs. Educating girls and women, they are the foundations of many cultures and if you influence a woman in a positive way with books, she will pass it onto her future generations and make sure her children are in schools. Greg talks about his struggle with his organization to build schools in Pakistan. I don't want to spoil too much of the book but this book is about the present time and the 'war' that is currently happening in the Middle East and how Greg Mortenson is fighting the war and winning slowly! He has built a relationship with these people of Pakistan over something as simple as tea but a powerful tool in their culture.
Great book! a must read!!!
A diverting human story August 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book opens up in 1993 with Greg Mortenson as a young climbing/hiking enthusiast, getting himself trapped at a very high distance on the "K2" mountain of the Karakoram range in northern Pakistan and somehow managing to make it down K2's notoriously inhospitable terrain without completely succumbing to the elements. The story of Mortenson's attempt to get himself off the mountain, as told by Relin, is quite gripping. His body in a very dangerous condition physically, he stumbled into the remote village of Korphe and his live was changed forever. Touched by the generosity and assistance in nursing his health back to vitality that the village's deeply impoverished Shiite Muslims provided him, he resolved to pay them back in some way. He was upset that the village had little ability to provide schooling to its children so he promised the village chief, Haji Ali, that he would one day return and build the village a school.
Building the school became the full focus of his life. Back in the US, he sunk himself deeper into poverty so he could save his own money, wrote hundreds of letters to rich people asking for assistance in building the school, was abandoned by his girlfriend, got mugged and lost his job as an emergency ward night shift nurse. He received little support from the rich individuals he wrote to for assistance. But through his contacts in mountain climbing circles he met Jean Hoerni, one of the founders of the semi-conductor industry and eventually, Hoerni provided Mortenson with enough funds to build the school at Korphe and schools elsewhere in the most neglected parts of Pakistan.. Hoerni endowed the Central Asian Institute (CAI) with start up funds and made Mortenson its first director.
The CAI was set up with a board of directors and Mortenson acquired a bevy of loyal Pakistani lieutenants. He married a woman named Tara Bishop after six days of knowing her and they soon had children. He would be separated from his family for months at a time while in Pakistan. Mortenson deliberately kept his own salary at a level not much higher than the poverty level, as he wanted all available funds to go to Pakistan and to support the shaky financial foundations of CAI. Mortenson continued to run up and down Pakistan, helping to guide the construction of new schools, continually returning to Korphe, where Haji Ali treated him as his own son. He soon branched out from building schools to other projects, including building centers for women to get together and sew and do other activities. With the backing and aid of the supreme leader of Pakistan's Shiites, Syed Abbas, Mortenson led a project to build a refugee camp, with a school, drinkable water, etc. for Pakistanis whose villages had been destroyed by Indian bombardment during the undeclared Kargil war of 1999.
Mortenson originally gave unqualified support to the US war on Afghanistan in 2001. However after learning of major civilian casualties he became less and less supportive. In the months after the Taliban fell, he found that most of the promised American aid to Afghanistan was not getting through and most of the aid that did get through was being "re-directed" to American military bases in the Persian Gulf in preparation for the war on Iraq. He wondered how the American military could easily get money and arms to the Northern Alliance warlords while at the same time a dedicated woman teacher in Kabul had not been paid her 40 dollar monthly salary in many, many months. He was invited to the Pentagon to speak on aid to Afghanistan. He saw a great many individuals running around with laptops and wondered how such cold calculating officials would feel if they were removed from their air conditioned offices and saw the victims of civilian casualties from American bombs and cluster bombs. Soon Mortenson would be extending the CAI's efforts from Pakistan to Afghanistan.
There are some diverting adventures detailed in this book. For example there was Mortenson being detained eight days in a dark room by the Taliban in Waziristan. Then there was Mortenson along with two Afghan assistants, getting trapped with a stalled vehicle in a dark tunnel in northern Afghanistan and then stumbling into the crossfire of an AK 47 battle between poppy growing gangs. His Afghan friends got him out of the crossfire by hitchhiking him onto the back of a smugglers' pickup truck filled with rotting goat skins. Relin seems to pile up too much detail at times. But he makes Mortenson and his Pakistan and Afghani associates seem very real and likeable. In the midst of Islamophobic propaganda barrages from talk radio, Frontpagemag.com, Israeli Orientalists, etc. this book provides a needed corrective. It portrays most Muslims as people just like you and me who need to be treated with a little common courtesy. In other words they need to treated in a fashion opposite than how many of our soldiers seem to have treated Iraqis from the beginning, e.g. shooting and killing Iraqis who did not understand commands screamed at them in English, and otherwise acting in domineering and violent ways.
I certainly agree that women's education in the Muslim world is very important. But I fear that stressing aid from NGO's like the CAI at the expense of avoiding underlying economic factors will never solve any of Pakistan's long term problems with poverty. Pakistan, like the rest of the third world, has been forced to adhere to the International Monetary Fund's demands to slash social programs, privatize government services, reduce tariffs against foreign competition, etc. The IMF has devastated Pakistan and the third world. Corruption of course is a big problem in Pakistan, perhaps to get even bigger now that Benazir Bhutto's husband is returning to power. Our major support for military dictatorships, culminating in the support for Zia Al Haq's maddrassas and drug running mujahedeen, of course, have also greatly harmed Pakistan.
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